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Sunday, 7 July 2013

"Flowers and colors are what women want from me," Giambattista Valli said before his couture show his fifth, the program notes reminded us.
"That's what I give them, but every time I get inspired by something
different." The something different tonight was porcelain. A photograph
of Valli's own Meissen porcelain decorated the back of his invitation;
on the runway, he divided the collection into neat sections, each
influenced by a different country's china. To start, a series of eight
looks in Capodimonte white, their tone-on-tone embroideries setting a
sweet, if not quite virginal note that for the most part continued
through the other groupings. With its leggy, vertical silhouette, even
the floor-grazing trumpet skirts were sheer this collection seemed to
skew more toward Valli's twenty-something acolytes than to octogenarian
fan Lee Radziwill.

Discover amazing 'Behind The Scenes' at Giambattista Valli Fall/Winter 2013/14 Couture 5, and get linked to the entire couture collection at the end of this post, so amazing! Love, Andrea

After Capodimonte was Wedgwood. The Valentino designers riffed on Delft
pottery in March, so a blue and white embroidered evening coat, while
vivid, felt a bit familiar. France's sanguine red Sèvres came next. A
strapless dress in draped mousseline with three-dimensional poppy
florettes on the bodice was more hot-blooded.

The multicolor Meissen-influenced embroideries were last, and they were
the best. Red-tipped pink silk flowers cascading down one side of a
tulle column were so lush they could've been real, and sprays of
nearly-neon pink and yellow blooms on downy white gowns made you look
twice. Luigi Scialanga's sculpted gunmetal belts, like twists of ribbon,
accessorized many of the dresses. In this section they were
gold-dipped, which reinforced Valli's theme beautifully.

"Giambattista Valli
was thinking of “porcelain goddesses” for his appropriately fragile and
delicate haute couture show, its runway decorated with classical
statuary draped in garlands of white hydrangea."